O’ Brother Where Art Thou

Thrill to the music of the stylish banjo pickers, fiddles, jugs, mandolin and mountain dulcimers. And listen as the caller sings out the steps for the square dance:

“Wave the Ocean, wave the Sea,

Wave that pretty girl back to me!”

Folk music is the sound of ordinary people. Wherever you go in the world, you’ll find a different version of folk songs that have been passed down from one generation to the next for centuries. 

My image of folk music, and its relatives — bluegrass, mountain music, hillbilly and country was an image of checkered shirt-wearing beardies strumming guitars, pickin’ banjos, and sawin’ away at fiddles; being played in towns in the Great Smokies and Blue Ridge Mountains. 

The myth of the music created by hillbillies offered a sip of reality and smashed to smithereens my biases some time ago.

After doing some research on Hee Haw a couple of years ago for fun, I decided to bring this music to Woodbury at my old place of work.  So we heard music from country folk, and danced the way mountain people have done it for hundreds of years.  We dressed up like the characters from Hee Haw at Kornfield Kounty, and sang songs such as “Mountain Dew”, “Soldier’s Song”, and “Pretty Poly”.

I found out that the thumping good beat is unpretentious; it has wild rhythms and strange melodies.  Songs from the Mountains can only be learned in the valleys.  No music school can teach them, because no theory causes them to be sung perfectly.  They have gritty, down-to-earth sounds that celebrate a moment in life — a birth or marriage, death — or cleanin’ the gun out in anticipation of shootin’ the boy that’s steppin’ out on your daughter!!   

They are songs remembered through the shadows of the past.  A huge difference from the monotone gyrating message that confuses me today. The modern lubba dubba throbs with a message that can only be intriguing when you’re 17 and hormones are raging.

Country music often lacks the energizing factor with me, but the message; more times than naught, is spot on with my interests in family, fidelity and pride in country.

Music often relates to how you are feeling. Music is in each and every one of us. A song might pop up when you’re feeling happy or sad, excited or uneasy about something. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart understood this and expressed those feelings by penning more than 600 concertos, operas, ballads, and symphonies by the time of his death, at age 35.

If you listen to some bluegrass you'll notice an inclination to observe things like "wow, that banjo player can pick" while when listening to country it's more about "what an interesting tale".

And old time mountain music has artfully embroidered hillbilly sounds with modern techniques for years.  It's played and sung unplugged, the instrumentation is whatever we have laying around that someone can play which usually included things like guitar, fiddle, mandolin, banjo, jugs, trashcans etc. 

I think the popularity of hillbilly, bluegrass, and mountain music has grown as our constantly-changing modern society fears losing touch with its cultural roots. Today folk-like festivals appear throughout the country and are devoted to all kinds of folk themes–music, crafts, foods, storytelling, and ethnicity among others.

We are lucky to have our own close to Woodbury every year.

Check out the 11th Annual Washington County Bluegrass Festival, on Sept. 8, 2012, at the Lake Elmo Park Reserve.

http://www.co.washington.mn.us/info_for_residents/parks_division/programs_and_events/bluegrass_festival/

Wear some bandannas, bring some hay, wanted pictures, plus the cow-boy or country grub of choice…BBQ!

It will be a hee-hawin’, cattle ropin’,  square dancin’ good time!

And, you too can pick your partner and join in :

“Swing her high, swing her low,

Don’t step on your honey’s  pretty little toe”.